Daimler and the German government will evaluate Conductix-Wampfler inductive electric vehicle charging — and 100% zero-emission living — at this house in Berlin beginning in March 2012. more information on the haus, with a webcam, at this German government (and German language) website

“We are keen to find out how the inductive charging process proves in daily use,” said Herbert Kohler, head of e-drive and future mobility in the research and advanced development department at Daimler AG. “We have already demonstrated the essential feasibility of the technology,” Kohler said in a release. “The experience in day-to-day use will now provide important pointers for the further course of development.

“A number of technical and financial issues also need to be resolved before we can really assess the marketability of this technology,” Kohler said.

According to Conductix-Wampfler, the “efficiency of the system admittedly still doesn’t match charging by cable, but is with 90% already very promising and only slightly beneath cable based solutions, if all components from socket to battery are taken into account.” Daimler has two inductive charging stations in daily tests at its Böblingen-Hulb (Stuttgart) engineering facility, Conductix-Wampfler says.

The Effizienzhaus project involves a family of four living in a house in Berlin that’s “intended to generate more electricity than it consumes… surplus electricity can be used to recharge battery-powered electric vehicles, for example – the home as a personal filling station,” Daimler says, thus “seamlessly incorporating the area of electric mobility.”

Daimler, as part of Germany’s Effizienzhaus Plus mit Elektromobilität program, will test inductive charging on a battery electric E-Cell vehicle in Berlin using an ‘unplugged’ Conductix-Wampfler system

“Both the inductive and the cable-based charging devices are harmonically integrated in the house’s architecture,” the automaker says. “The coordinated design means that the family will feel totally at home in the cars, thus communicating the concept of integrated sustainable home living and motoring on a visual and an emotional level.”

A family of four is to live in the house on an experimental basis for 15 months.

The Effizienzhaus-Plus mit Elektromobilität project was inaugurated in Berlin on December 7 by Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel and Peter Ramsauer, member of the Bundestag and Federal Minister of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs.